The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-10-02
copyrighted 1887

N~~NNS
less.
Copyrighted 1872
New YORK, Oct. 1.-"No, we don't 6
pect to find any haunted houses in the grit
cities, especially in New York. The PC
ticality and the mutability of men and hoses
are not favorable to ghosts"
That's what a member of the Societ' for
Psychical Research said to me.
was amazed at it, for New York the
matter of ghosts, as in the matter ofnost
other things, is far ahead of the rest f the
country.
There are plenty of haunted hous with
all modern improvements, on the Eth av-
enue, tenanted by advance ghos quite
abreast Of the latest thing in ptumatol-
ogy.
/ don't think the ghost busnesis carried
on anywhere on the island in te old-fash-
Toned and ridiculous stripe of tb ghosts of
hundred years ago. The splits do not
clank chains and point out burjd skelet ons
and knock down the pans and cookery, and
scare the life out of the kitcen maids as
they did in the time of the Tesleys. Nor
are the haunted houses islated and set
apart for the finger of superstition to point
AS u rue So AsiSO dS Inc
ghosts drive out one family another comes
in, and whenever the plac' becomes unten-
antable, that great exorlser, the contrac-
tor, comes along, sprinkbs his holy water
on it with hose and teas it down. That
plan effectually scattersihe spirits whether
they materlalize as rats or roam as
wraithS
No, sir, long before tie Society for Psy-
chical Research was instituted whenever
I ncfi
tute it) we had little party of practical
ghost hunters here in tbs city who set out
to find the rationale of the ghost business.
II | tell you who were IN that party you
will no doubt recognize some of them.
There was Winship, the artist, who was a
Swedenborgian, one of the best takers of
transcendentallsm in the country and one of
the bitterest haters OF the table tipping,
medium working gang ever saw. There
was Ormund, who travelled all over the
country for well-attestei phenomena, who
wrote up the result of his Investigations in
the Graphic, and afterwards went to India
to study the Astral BODY busin Ks There
was DIR. Meade, the panphlesas', and later
the Neurosthenia inventor, one of the pro-
foundest materialists l ever met, whose
theory of life was comprehended in the re-
mark that man was worm In a BARREL"
and there was Avery Wells, who smoked
cigarettes and was once called "Unsavory
Smells" by John G. Freund. To this group
may be added Maiden, the melancholy and
almost miSanthropic wretch who wrote the
funny editorials for daily paper and kept
the town laughing for year or two before
he got foreign appointment. Like all
funny men, he had morbid desire to ex-
plot and expose SpiriJualism.
Wells would hunt up haunted houses for
us-how he managed to find them l never
knew, but he certainly did furnish us with
some of the best attested cases of local dis
turbance and authenticated apparitions,
and he successfully exploded the old-fash-
Toned notion that ghosts prefer to walk in
deSolate old ancestral mansions by the
''nights' Plutonian shore" We found
them walking in railway stations, in store
houses, in banGs in crowded tenements; that
is to say, we found the living record and
willing attestations of them We were not
so lucky in findiaA- ~ wraiths themselves.
We visited two old buildings up town, said
to have been built during the revolution,
and. having clear sheet of ghost disturb
ance stretching over fifty years. We did
the regular business of watching with
candle through the night; we tried to secure
all the conditions of superior sub-natural an
noyance. But not a crack of a board, not
a breath of cold air, not football, or a clank,
or a sigh broke the stupid monotony of our
vigils.
Maiden made lightsome fun of us in his
best sepulchral style, and DIR. Meade &C
oepted the negative results as proofs posi-
tive.
We tried the Nathan mansion not long
after the celebrated murder We took one
of the best ''sensitivesn there, and had a
midnight lunch sent over from the Fifth Av
enue Hotel. We went up to the Morrison
house after that strange story in all the
papers, of face in the window. We got
H., ID g
Cruger house. But we did not get sound
or sight of ghost, and Maiden and the
doctor had humor and science all thel' own
way until we ran across the VIII Davidson
house, ON the Fifth avenue
/ ought to tell you, though, one very nota-
BILE thing about that Cruger house on Sec
ond avenue, and | don't think any of the
investigating party that have named Zone
of them, alas, is dead will dispute the state
ment, which is this: We found indubitable
living evidence that, whether ghost
St not, the Cruger house, so far as the ten
ants were concerned, was under some kind
of a spell or culsc. The record of misfor
tunes begins abo9s fifteen years ago. A
whole family of twelve melted away in it
during one year, and the father, who was
Prussian, fled to his native country. AS
near as we could get at it there was not the
slightest ground for suspicion of epidemic or
poison, or hereditary cause. Each victim
died from a differing set of circumstances.
The next tenant was boss mason by the
name of Comfy or Cowly. He had wife
and two children, one of which was an in
FAINT in arms He had not been in the house
three months before the infant was killed
by a most extraordinary accident. The
father came in one day suddenly, picked
the infant up from its mothers lap and in
tossing it up impulsively struck the sharp
point of common chandelier squarely in
to the suture of its head and killed it in
stantly
About five months afterwards Mrs. Comfy,
who was standing on stepladder in the
same room putting up window curtain,
fell, by the giving way of the steps i'll
lateral direction, knocking down large
mirror, a fragment of which severed
every artery in one arm, and she bled
to death before assistance could be OBJ
tanned.
We saw the blood stains on the boards
long afterwards
The next victim in the house was young
man by the name of Ryerson, who, you may
recall was accidentally shot by his own
brother while sitting at the window where
Mrs. Comfy had fallen a year or two before.
There was then pond in an empty lot OPP
posite the house, and the younger brother
had gone there with a musket to shoot frogs.
The first shot he fired struck the surface OF
the pond. glanced and entered the left breast
of the young man at the window. You
VIII find newspaper accounts or IL IN Uhe